A trip to Kew Bridge

We went to Kew Bridge today near London to see our daughter, Katie, in a boat race. The races were for medical students across all the colleges in London.

Here's Katie's boat (the first one) and the impudent second boat, trying to overtake them.

Afterwards we went to a Greek restaurant in Chiswick. Here we are peeping out of the front window.


Walking back to the car afterwards, we spotted an unusual front garden -- not many people in Reading have statues of wild boars in front of their houses so we had to take a photo:

Small-town living

When my father moved the family from beautiful eccentric Natchez, Mississippi, to the teeny dull Halstead, Kansas, when I was 12, I was devastated. Halstead had about 2,000 people in it, and everyone knew everyone. I hated that. There was no anonymity. Anything you did was watched and talked about.

I missed the greenery of the South. Kansas was so flat and the landscape was boring -- just pale brown with wheat. I was interested, though, in how people from Kansas hated the landscape of the South -- too claustrophobic, too many plants and trees -- you couldn't see for miles like you could in the Midwest.

So I guess it's whatever you grow up with that you love the best. But I thought of Halstead last night as I was finishing up Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. Of small towns, he wrote:

The tradition, repeated in scores of magazines every month, is that the American village remains the one sure abode of friendship, honesty, and clean sweet marriageable girls. Therefore all men who succeed in painting in Paris or in finance in New York at last become weary of smart women, return to their native towns, assert that cities are vicious, marry their childhood sweethearts, and presumably, joyously abide in those towns until death....

It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment...the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery of self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God.

Blogging is good for your health

Scientific American and Gawker (www.gawker.com) combine to give us this list of why blogging is good for us:

1. Bitching and moaning alleviates stress! "As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a 'placebo for getting satisfied.'"

2. It gets you high. "Blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art."

3. If nothing else, there's the placebo effect: "Cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not."

4. Instant feedback, unlike your diary: "Unlike a bedside journal, blogging offers the added benefit of receptive readers in similar situations."

Friday roundup

Out late last night at chorus rehearsals in London where chorus master is still trying to teach us to sing Bel Canto.

Bel canto (beautiful singing), an Italian musical term, refers to the art and science of vocal technique which originated in Italy during the late sixteenth century and reached its pinnacle in the early part of the nineteenth century during the Bel Canto opera era. Bel canto singing characteristically focuses on perfect evenness throughout the voice, skillful legato, a light upper register, tremendous agility and flexibility, and a certain lyric, "sweet" timbre.

He had us twirling our fingers around our temples while we sang the very high notes, and doing other tricks to get the sound that he wanted. If you're in Cardiff on the 19th of July, you can hear the results.


My commute into office
The drive into the office can sometimes take as much as an hour, but at this time of the year, I have the comfort of all the rhododendron bushes blooming along the roads. It's glorious the way you can look at these flowers for miles and miles as you drive. Here's a pic:


Still Reading...
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1920. Lewis satirizes small-town America with its ossified views and rigidity. It's very good, and I enjoy the details of 1920s life -- women had to quit their jobs when they got married, telephones and bathtubs were absolute luxuries, and so on.

Are you gullible?

I am so gullible. My husband remembers the first time he noticed I'm that way --we were at a baseball game in Boston, and I wanted to buy a Red Sox baseball cap, but couldn't decide what was a good price to pay -- I wandered around Fenway for a while then bought one when a man said to me, "This is the best price you'll find in the park." I told Mel that I got the best price and why, and Mel laughed because I'll believe anything people tell me.

I thought of this last week when I realized some people I know who always go on and on about herbal remedies, and how ignorant people are who take conventional drugs, are actually big drinkers. I took them at face value, and thought they must so disciplined and rigorous about their chemical intake because of their insistence on ingesting only natural things then I realized that a couple of them smoke too.

Are you gullible? Take this amusing test -- link below:

Gullibility Test

I'm glad I'm a guy and can have 6-second phone calls

My son just picked up the ringing phone. It was his father, calling from the playing ground at the university around the corner. "We have ten for our football team so you don't need to come play," he said to Mikey without fanfare. "OK bye," Mikey replied, hanging up the phone. And this is the first time he's talked to his father all day.

Then he said, "I'm so glad I'm a guy and can have six-second phone calls."

I said that I don't talk on the phone much. "You must be kidding!" he replied. "You're on for HOURS..." Then he mocked me talking on the phone cruelly: "I saw the cutest bag, then I looked at makeup and then I saw the sweetest little thing I just had to buy...."

Recipe of the Day -- Potato Pesto Salad
Thanks to Brenda Jones for this:

Use those little tiny baby new taters (no peeling necessary)---cut 'em in half and boil 'em, then dump in a jar of ready-made pesto and toss 'em around, adding fresh chopped basil and some toasted pine nuts on top to make it look fancier, and chill it overnight. The olive oil from the pesto soaks in and makes them so fab.

Walking -- the wildest thing she's ever heard of

Interesting article on CNN website today about how Americans are changing their lifestyles in response to high gas prices (below). A friend on mine just reported on an exchange she had with her friend on this very topic last night:

"Last night after dessert, we were sitting around talking, and the topic of high gas prices came up. Yes, yes, we all agreed, $4.00 per gallon, and higher to come, is perfectly obscene! I mentioned that I have begun biking to the health club, and bought a 2-wheel rolling cart so that I can simply stroll it to the supermarket instead of driving---

"WHAATTTTT?" shrieked my friend. "You do---what?"

"Er---walk to the grocery store. What's so funny about that?"

"That is the wildest thing I've ever heard. Nobody does that!"

"Well, I do...Hell, it's barely a quarter of a mile away, and there are sidewalks---"

"But don't you feel weird? Don't drivers honk at you?"

"Yes, they do, but only because we live here in a fat-ass lazy sedentary society in which the very idea of someone doing a simple errand on foot is incomprehensible." (At which point my friend thought that it might be a good idea for this woman to try a little walking herself, but she was too well-bred to say so.)

From CNN:

As rising gas prices leave drivers with ever-heftier tabs at the pump, Americans have started looking for ways to reduce the drain on their budget. For some, transitioning away from a one person, one car lifestyle has proved rewarding.

Twenty-two-year-old Janaki Purushe bought her bike, which she rides to work every day, for $100.

Janaki Purushe, a 22-year-old genetic researcher living in Rockville, Maryland, bikes just about everywhere she goes. "When I had the opportunity to finally plan my own life after I graduated college," Purushe explains, "I took into consideration where I was going to shop, where my friends live, where my boyfriend lives, and I definitely tried to plan the location of my home around where I was going."

Now, although she still has a car, Purushe bikes to work every day. It's a ten-mile round-trip commute, and she carries a change of clothes for when she gets to the office. She says she loves it. "When I'm riding my bike, I really pay attention to what's around me, and the weather's been great. I feel like I'm getting more out of my days."

Editorial note: You Americans would just die if you had to pay what we have to pay for gas in the UK! :) (Double what you pay now.)

We got soaked

Day in London with the girls (Di Allen and Madeleine Cotter) yesterday but all it did was rain, and I don't mean little showers, I mean heavy heavy rain that flooded out parts of the city.

Britain was lashed by storms as almost a month's worth of rain fell in just one day. An average of 60mm of rain falls on the UK in May - and some areas had that in just a morning. The foul weather caused widespread Bank Holiday misery for many as roads ground to a halt and train lines were submerged under water.

Here we are at Papageno's, a quirky restaurant with a wonderful theatrical atmosphere and delicious food.




After eating, we went to see Fat Pig near Trafalgar Square:


The story: Tom meets Helen at lunch. They get on well and start dating. But Helen is the titular Fat Pig and Tom finds himself trying to conceal the burgeoning relationship from his work colleagues - mischievous plonker Carter and jilted Jeannie.

PS
Di was kind of lost in the photo earlier so I told her I'd put another one up of her where she is the star:

Sounds charged with magic

You know that feeling you get sometimes that all is right with the world, and you luxuriate in the sounds of your own life? Maybe the sun is shining and you are having your first cup of coffee outside and suddenly the sounds of the morning seem like a lovely song -- Sinclair Lewis captures this in a paragraph I read last night in his book Main Street from 1920:

She listened to the village noises common to all the world, jungle or prairie; sounds simple and charged with magic -- dogs barking, chickens making a gurgling sound of content, children at play, a man beating a rug, wind in the cottonwood trees, a locust fiddling, a footstep on the walk, jaunty voices of a grocer's boy in the kitchen, a clinking anvil, a piano - not too near.

I took the Sun for granted

My friend in Mississippi is starting to complain about the muggy heat there already. I am so envious. It's chilly and rainy in England, and I can't get out for more than a few minutes to garden today. I can't believe that I took the sun for granted all those years I lived in the US.

Yesterday, I put a chair out to sit in the sun as it was the only nice day of the Bank Holiday weekend, but it was too cold -- the sun would come out for a few minutes, I'd rush outside to bask in it, then it would go behind a cloud. We played peek-a-boo for a couple of hours, the Sun and I, then I gave up.

I liked the way the sun shone on my brick wall yesterday, so half of it was in shade and half in brilliant light. I love my Mr Sun plaque -- I got him at a dollar store (Poundstretcher, they call them here).

My friend in Mississippi wondered if it was Memorial Day in the UK this weekend so I told her that we have Remembrance Day in November to honor the war dead. It's a very moving ceremony they have too.

It's a Bank Holiday on Monday in the UK, so we only have to work four days next week. Bank Holidays are always perplexing to Americans who are working with Brits and can't understand why they have these days off. I had a Californian friend complain that she kept calling staff in the UK about work, but it seems like every time she called, they were having another Bank Holiday!

Recipe of the Day: Lamb Kofte pitas
I made a delish lunch today. I put lamb koftes (recipe below) in toasted pita bread with salad, red onion, crumbled feta cheese and toasted pine nuts, and was it good. I should have put some Greek yogurt in too but didn't have any.

Minced lamb 1lb 2oz/500g
Small onion 1
Small egg 1
Ground coriander 1½ teaspoon
Ground cumin ½ teaspoon
Lemon juice or zest of 1 lemon 1 teaspoon
Garlic cloves 2
Dried mint or fresh mint 1 tablespoon (2 for fresh)
Lamb or vegetable stock cube

Reading Material of the Day
I am embarrassed to admit that I ordered a book on the Menopause and have started reading it. It's completely depressing reading -- apparently you have years of mood swings, hot flashes and other physical symptoms, then you go through menopause, lose the protection of all those hormones, and so are prey to a host of diseases like heart disease and diabetes plus your skin gets leathery and your hair thins!

I think I will go back to reading detective stories instead of this stuff.

Gloomy Sunday

My friend Elizabeth from Detroit wrote: "Yesterday I saw a really wonderful, though extremely sad, movie called 'Gloomy Sunday.' It's based on a song of the same name. The story of that song, and the song writer, is equally sad, filled with urban legends, and quite compelling. I'd never heard of it - have you?"

"Gloomy Sunday" is a song written in 1933, by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezső Seress.

Though recorded and performed by many singers, "Gloomy Sunday" is closely associated with Billie Holliday, who scored a hit version of the song in 1941. Due to unsubstantiated urban legends about its inspiring hundreds of suicides, "Gloomy Sunday" was dubbed the "Hungarian suicide song" in the U.S. The composer did commit suicide in 1968, but most other rumors of the song being banned from radio, or sparking suicides, are unsubstantiated, and were partly propagated as a deliberate marketing campaign.

Two big strong Nubians

From my friend the magazine writer:

"I had to drive 3 hours up to East Bumfuck, to attend a photo shoot for a huuuuuuge Norman-style manor on 2,000 acres---gorgeous, sumptuous, done in beautiful taste, but talk about in the middle of nowhere!!! Man-oh-man, if I had that kind of money, the last place I'd plop it would be 25 miles outside Starkville, Mississippi.

And the owner is a widow in her 70's---what on earth was she thinking, spending millions on such a project late in life? I'm sure her kids (eagerly awaiting their inheritance) wonder the same thing. They'll never be able to sell it for anything remotely approaching its value. The widow has a great staff, though---a cook and a butler in the kitchen, keeping us all plied with delicious dainties and even champagne.

At one point, when the cameraman was moving all his lighting stuff into the front parlor, a little bird flew in through the open front door. Nobody knew quite what to do, except the widow. She actually pulled a bell-cord, and within moments, two very large men (groundskeepers) came in silently, and proceeded to capture the tiny fluttering creature. I'm watching this, thinking, ohhh, yes...in my next life I want two big strong Nubians who will just appear out of nowhere and catch birds for me."

Picture from the house she was writing about:

Stupid businesses in my area

Near my house is a row of stores -- I am fascinated by the succession of businesses that are opened with great optimism then closed later in abject failure. Below is a pic of the street I am thinking about, Southampton Street in Reading, Berkshire.

One business I saw set up recently made me shake my head in disbelief. A couple from Denmark, I think, had this great idea:


Experience our range of excellent steaks and roasts the American way.

Well, first of all, it's the British who are famous for roast dinners, not people from Chicago, am I right? The idea that you would want to save hours preparing a roast chicken and potatoes is a real lightbulb, if only you couldn't get rotisserie chickens and already prepared, hot and ready-to-pop-into-your-mouth roasted potatoes and Yorkshire puddings at every supermarket in Reading.

If only this couple had done more research. "I wish they had asked me," I would say to my husband sadly, as we walked past the restaurant sometimes and saw they had no customers. One time we saw a family in there eating and were so hopeful that this was the start of a booming trade, but no.

Now tables and chairs are stacked up inside, the kitchen stripped of dishes and cutlery, and letters are lying on the floor inside unclaimed, bills from the phone company, the local government, etc. The saddest thing was when their signs advertising the food and service ("I could get used to this!" was their slogan) started to wither in the sunlight and crumple, beaten, to the floor.

PS
There's a new business going up next to the closed restaurant. I saw a painter putting the finishing touches on a sign as I walked past to pick up our Friday night Chinese takeout. Tell me what you think of this one -- it's a suntan business and nothing else! No beauty treatments or manicures offered. Just a bunch of sunbeds. Their slogan is 'getting a tan needn't cost a fortune.' That made me chuckle since I think getting a tan won't be so difficult since summer is coming in England and also people go away for weeks to sunny climes. How long do you give this venture?

Oh and one last one. This is in a nicer part of Reading with higher rents. You would think in a recession that photography businesses would be suffering, especially with the advent of digital cameras and easy photo publishing. This business is even better though. This is a fancy darkened studio for NUDE PHOTOGRAPHY! You have to take your clothes off (they do offer a chaperone). Who do you know among your friends who will be rushing to do this?

American versus British musical notation

Eeek! Brain failure at Philharmonia rehearsals last night. I couldn't remember British musical terminology to save my life. I think no one noticed that I didn't know my crotchet from my quaver though. Below is a list of American terms, followed by the British equivalents.
You know, I thought when I figured out British slang and the currency, I was halfway there, but now this musical lingo has me stumped. Plus the musical director was using Italian sentences to teach us the proper Bel Canto singing style so that's another post when I finally try to figure out what he was really saying.

Whole note (American)
Semi-breve (British)

Half note
Minim

Quarter note
Crotchet

Eighth note
Quaver

Sixteenth note
Semiquaver

Thirty-second note
Demisemiquaver

Sixty-fourth note
Hemidemisemiquaver (NOTE: Instead of actually pronouncing such a long name for such a short note, people sometimes just say "quick note")

Hundred twenty-eighth note
Quasihemidemisemiquaver (I'm not making this up: it's in Scholes' Oxford Companion to Music and elsewhere), or Semihemidemisemiquaver

God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way!
Arturo Toscanini, Italian conductor, reprimanding a trumpet player

Russian lit fans: Can you guess who this is?

My friend Elizabeth from Detroit started a game with me. She sent me this photo and asked if I could guess who it was. Do you know who it is? I suppose you need to have gone through a Russian writers kick in college like we did for this to be easy. I couldn't figure it out though.

I begged Elizabeth to reveal the identity. She said:

"It's Mikhail Zoschenko.I don't know what on earth made me think of him after all these years, but suddenly I did and then I googled his name, which is how I found the picture. Then I went on eBay, and that very day there was going to be a live auction for a book he autographed. I was so excited. Although the bidding was going to start at $250 - not exactly in my league - I thought I would watch the auction anyway. It sold yesterday for $2,200.

So clearly Zoschenko did not die and be completely forgotten, as though he never lived, as he feared. Because someone paid quite a sum for his autograph, and I cut out the picture (the one I sent you) and put it in my office, just to think of him from time to time."

In his prime, satirist Mikhail Zoschenko was more widely read in the Soviet Union than either Pasternak or Solzhenitsyn. His stories give expression to the bewildered experience of the ordinary Soviet citizen struggling to survive in the 1920s and ’30s, beset by an acute housing shortage, ubiquitous theft and corruption, and the impenetrable new ideological language of the Soviet state. Written in the semi-educated talk of the man or woman on the street, these stories enshrine one of the greatest achievements of the people of the Soviet Union — their gallows humor.

Excerpt from Nervous People and other stories:
"I went to a bathhouse last Saturday...They handed me two checks. One for my underwear, the other for my coat and hat.
But where is a naked man to put those checks? Honestly, there's no place for them. You have no pockets. All you have is a belly and legs."

I just checked with my friend Vladimir at work about Zoschenko, and he's been to his grave near St. Petersburg. One day maybe I'll get to Russia and see this stuff for myself.

Singing and mammograms

Started rehearsals last night for a performance of Elijah in Cardiff on the 19th of July with the Philharmonia Chorus. It was quite a trek to get up to London after a full day at the office, but the experience of singing with a chorus that good made it worth it. And the music of Elijah is so beautiful, too.

Here's a blurb for the concert:

"One of the mightiest of all choral works, Mendelssohn’s Elijah brings to life a great Biblical epic in music of overwhelming power and a grand heroic sweep that elates and carries its listeners with it. With a star line-up of soloists, led by Bryn Terfel as the charismatic yet dark brooding figure of the prophet Elijah, this promises to be one of the highlights of the Lloyds TSB Welsh Proms Cardiff."

Got to go back tonight for another rehearsal after work. Must find some stamina.

This morning, though, I'm going to be late into work because I have to go for a mammogram. Is this TMI (too much information) for you all? I guess compared to the revelations of Tony Blair's wife in her new memoirs (she didn't take contraception on a visit to the Queen in Balmoral and got pregnant -- sorry, didn't mean to imply she was sleeping with the Queen, but with her hubby the Prime Minister), my news is small time.

One thing I do love about having to go to a morning appointment is that I get to walk to the appointment in the morning sunshine. I just love the morning, and hate to miss it because I'm in the office. I'll park my car a few streets away from the hospital just so I'll be able to walk and enjoy the glorious morning sunshine.

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love, or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies? Erich Fromm

Happy Birthday Paul

Happy Birthday to one of our silent readers, Paul Hounslow. He works at Nokia with me. He was badly injured in a motorcycle accident a few years ago and could barely walk. When I first came to Nokia, he was using crutches and couldn't walk much at all. But now look at him in the photo above. He's like a young thing now -- except, he's having a big birthday today.

I came in and started to spank him with Happy Birthday spanks like we do in America but that is considered bizarre over here. I was trying to get to 50 slaps but my arm gave up with the effort of trying to deliver that many blows to his backside, plus one of his colleagues, Sonny Dawn-Hiscox, told me that Paul is really 70. Then another guy in the office amended that and said he's at least a million years old.

At least Paul has the comfort of having such dear friends as these to keep him warm in his old age....

Emergency Relaxation Method

A psycho (what we call psychiatrists in our family) gave me a helpful sheet of paper once with an emergency method for calming down in a stressful or panic-filled situation. It's been helpful for many people; one time a friend even called me long distance so I could read it out to her, and she could put it into practice right then over the phone. Maybe it'll help you sometime?

Emergency Relaxation Method

When you are getting really worked up:

1. Stay STOP to yourself. Let your breath go.

2. Breathe in slowly and as you breathe out, drop your shoulders and relax your hands.

3. Breathe in slowly again and as you breathe out, let your face, jaw and forehead relax.

4. Take two small quiet breaths.

5. Continue with what you were doing more slowly.

You could also try the Zen approach of forcing yourself to concentrate on an object during an attack of nerves, such as a flower. You must totally concentrate on it -- observe the color, count the petals, take note of every small detail -- that distracts your mind. We used to use this technique when my daughter got anxious about her exams.

Something to look forward to

Read the extract below -- at last something positive about getting older. From a medical website:

"Aging brings a sense of peace and calm, according to a new study from the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Starting at about age 60, participants reported more feelings of ease and contentment than their younger counterparts.

Catherine Ross and John Mirowsky, professors of sociology, have published the findings in "Age and the Balance of Emotions" in the May 19 issue of Social Science and Medicine. The research was funded in part by the National Institute on Aging.

'...contentment, calm and ease are some of the most common emotions people feel as they age," Ross said. "Emotions that are both active and negative, such as anxiety and anger, are especially unlikely among the elderly.'"

Lord God Almighty flounder

The email below was sent in by one of our readers. She didn't write this but one of her acquaintances did. I'm wondering what Jesus would make of this -- would he decide the food writer wasn't a Christian because she used his dad's name in this way? But doesn't this woman sort of do the same thing by describing what happened to a wider audience? (I want to find this recipe too -- now I simply must try it and see what words come to mind when I eat it. I might find it's Satanic.)

"I was profoundly shocked and disappointed to read the food writer's column Wednesday, in which she used a very unlikely expletive ("Lord God Almighty") to describe the flavor of her recipe for stuffed flounder. She was one of my favorite writers--but not any more. I was so naive as to think she was a Christian !!!!"

Busy Monday

This is how I spent yesterday.

Morning -- at office.

Afternoon at the dentist's office, getting my daughter's teeth fixed after her road accident that left her with country-western singer teeth.

This is Katie with her brilliant dentist, Hitesh Chandegra. He said no one had ever asked to take a photo of a dental appointment before. I could see he thought it was a bit odd. Modern dentistry is amazing! Hitesh had Katie fixed up within an hour. This is only a first step as the tooth still might die and need an implant, also she needs braces, but it was incredible what they can do these days. Here she is, having a new tooth glued on to the old broken one.

After the dentist's, we went to London to meet my husband and my friend Mrs. Williams for champagne and the theatre. Here is Katie's brand new smile on display at Fortnum & Mason's:

(that's Mel getting in to the photo in the back -- he was trying to find the F&M champagne bar.)

We had some champagne before going to see Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking at the National Theatre. Mrs. Williams hates to have her picture taken so she made it impossible for me to get a good shot:

I blogged about Vanessa Readgrave last week here

The play was excellent but it could have been cut a little. Ninety minutes without interruption is a big chunk of time to sit still and concentrate, especially if you are sitting next to a heavy smoker like I was who smelled bad and had tons of patchouli and musk perfume on, like we are still living in the 1970s. I started sneezing and sniffing, and Mrs. Williams thought I was moved by the play and was weeping in the dark.

Will the circle be unbroken

My mother's sister Susan (that's her and Mom pictured above) sent me the lyrics to a song she'd been listening to recently that made her think of my mother. I'm adding a YouTube video of the Carter family performing it below.

(I think of my mother everyday and miss her. Little things make me sad like today when a Mother's Day card I was going to send her fell out of a book, and I realized I had no one to send it to now.)

I was standing
by my window
on a cold and cloudy day

When I saw the hearse wheel rolling
It was taking my mother away
Said undertaker, undertaker
won't you please drive real slow
That's my mother
my dear old mother
Lord I sure hate to see her go.

Will the circle be unbroken
by and by Lord by and by
There's a better home awaiting
in the sky Lord
in the sky

Sunday miscellany

After a week of rain in England, the sun has come out again. I was going to get out my sun lounger and relax then when I went outside to pick some bay leaves for soup I am making, I realized it was very cold so my dreams of relaxing in the sun today are put on hold.

Best of Blog Finalist
I am a Best of Blogs finalist in the Mommy Blog department, so please go vote for me when you have time at this site: http://www.thebestofblogs.com/2008/05/12/best-mommy-blogvote-here/

White Mischief: Don't buy this book
I read White Mischief by James Fox yesterday -- well, I didn't make it all the way through. Here's the background to the book but the writing isn't very compelling, so don't waste your money on it. If any of you want to read it, I'll send it to you.

It was the unsolved high society murder that fascinated the nation for more than half a century. With the decadent backdrop of the infamous Happy Valley set in Kenya, the killing of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, in 1941 was as intriguing as it was shocking.

The murder of Josslyn Hay, serial womaniser and inveterate gambler, has fascinated the nation for more than half a century. Was it a crime passionnel as a result of Erroll's notorious womanising or a political execution carried out because of his Right-wing connections? Who pulled the trigger on the gun - and where did the assassin hide the weapon, which has never been found? For 66 years the gripping, glamorous scandal, which was later immortalised in the book and film White Mischief, starring Charles Dance and Greta Scacchi, has shown no signs of being solved.

Recipe of the Day
I'm making this black bean soup today -- looks delish.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2-3 cloves garlic
2 (14 1/2 ounce) cans black beans
2 cups chicken broth or vegetable broth
salt and pepper
1 small red onion, chopped fine
1/4 cup cilantro, coarsely chopped or finely chopped (whatever you prefer)

Directions
Saute onion in olive oil. When onion becomes translucent, add cumin. Cook 30 seconds, then add garlic and cook for another 30 to 60 seconds. Add 1 can black beans and 2 cups vegetable broth. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Turn off heat. Using a hand blender, blend the ingredients in the pot, or transfer to a blender. Add the second can of beans to the pot along with blended ingredients and bring to a simmer. Serve soup with bowls of red onion and cilantro for garnish. I add a bit of cilantro to the pot, too.

My amendments to this recipe:
I put French Onion soup mix in while I cooked beans from scratch so didn't need to saute an onion. I added sherry and Rose's lime juice to the soup, and I used Rotel tomatoes instead of plain ones.

Kumar's BBQ etiquette

Kumar Sriskandan (link to his photography business here even though he moonlights as a GP) sends a reminder of BBQ etiquette to us.

"We are about to enter the summer and BBQ season. Therefore it is important to refresh your memory on the etiquette of this sublime outdoor cooking activity, as it's the only type of cooking a 'real' man will do, probably because there is an element of danger involved.

When a man volunteers to do the BBQ the following chain of events are put into motion:

Routine...

(1) The woman buys the food.
(2) The woman makes the salad, prepares the vegetables, and makes dessert.
(3) The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils and sauces, and takes it to the man who is lounging beside the grill - beer in hand.

Here comes the important part:

(4) THE MAN PLACES THE MEAT ON THE GRILL.

More routine....

(5) The woman goes inside to organize the plates and cutlery.
(6) The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is burning. He thanks her and asks if she will bring another beer while he deals with the situation.

Important again:

(7) THE MAN TAKES THE MEAT OFF THE GRILL AND HANDS IT TO THE WOMAN.

More routine....

(8) The woman prepares the plates, salad, bread, utensils, napkins, sauces, and brings them to the table.
(9) After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes.

And most important of all:
(10) Everyone PRAISES the MAN and THANKS HIM for his cooking efforts.
(11) The man asks the woman how she enjoyed 'her night off.' And, upon seeing her annoyed reaction, concludes that there's just no pleasing some women...."

Elizabeth's editorial comment:
Do you know I have had this happen to me...I am such a good cook (thanks to my friend Gailann Kimbrough who taught me loads when she lived in the UK) and produce beautiful food when cooking on the grill but when people discuss who is the best BBQ'er, they only use male nominees. (BTW, I think you have to suffer to be a good cook -- you have to risk pain from cooking at high temps to get the food cooked to perfection, whether the pain comes from oil splattering in the pan or from high fires on the BBQ.) Kumar's wife Sue makes the most delicious butterflied lamb on the BBQ -- tell me if you want the recipe.

Challah delivery -- from Detroit to the UK with love

Every time we go to see my husband's sister in north London (her area is heavily populated by Orthodox Jews), I check to see if the Jewish bakeries are open so I can get some challah -- a delicious egg bread that is eaten on the Sabbath (Friday nights). I used to eat it in college when I went to Elizabeth Applebaum's house for Sabbath dinners and never forgot how wonderful it was.

Recently Elizabeth Applebaum sent me this email: "I love the way you often mention challah - on your blog, in your emails - so I decided to get some for you. Some real, kosher challah. But how? Thanks to the Internet, of course. For the past few weeks I've been in communication with the synagogue in Reading. Yes, there is indeed one. It's called the Reading Hebrew Congregation and it's on Goldsmid Road. There isn't a kosher bakery in Reading, but there is one in London, which is where the Reading Hebrew Congregation gets their challah. So they're going to get you one (I believe they're actually going to deliver it, rather than mail it, because they're not far from you, they say). I've been working with the Kay family - lovely people.

Originally I was convinced I was an idiot because I had the idea just before Passover - not exactly the time to be ordering challah. But now I realize it all worked out for the best, because Sunday is Mother's Day, of course, and you could probably use some comfort food right about now."

I was so excited to think I would get a challah delivery right to my door in Reading. A nice woman called Mrs. Kay brought it over last week, and we had a brief chat but I was a bit distracted because of Katie's crash.

Later, I cut the challah into slices and buttered them, and we enjoyed them out in the garden in the fading sunshine. The next day, I had some toasted challah for breakfast and the rest of the family fought over who would get the last few pieces. (In our house, we fight over food - I'm a Scanlon by birth, and we never miss the chance to eat. The Thomas family is the same way, so my kids have eating genes on both sides....) The challah was so delicious that I did think about converting to Judaism so I could get to know the people at the synagogue and eat all the challah I could handle, then thought that would be a bit too hypocritical, even for me, since I don't believe in God.

I first blogged about challah a while back and posted an easy challah recipe to make it yourself.

La Chaim!

Chavs

I wasn't going to talk about chavs in this blog, but have been forced into it by new photographic evidence that one of our commenters might be headed into chavdom.

As wiki puts it, chav is a "mainly derogatory slang term in the United Kingdom for a stereotype fixated on low quality or counterfeit goods. It commonly refers to those belonging to a youth sub-culture, often stereotypically associated with a low socio-economic class, a striking dress sense and criminal activity."

Chavs almost ruined Burburry's business in the UK when they started wearing cheap knockoffs as in the photo above. Now nobody can wear it anymore because people will assume it's fake and was bought in some cheap town market, along with counterfeit mobile phones that use ridiculously annoying ringtones. Wild chavs get hit with ASBOs -- that means the police give them Anti-social behavioural orders that they are supposed to adhere to -- such as they can't be on the streets after midnight, etc., but now it's a badge of honor in chav families. ("Junior got his first ASBO! We are so proud.")

Here's a test to see if you are a chav:

Question: Have you ever shopped at Co-op, Iceland or Hyper Value?

Yes No

Question: Have you worn Burberry check in the last year?
Yes No

Question: Have you ever purchased a KFC family bucket?
Yes No

Question: Do you know any straight men who wear earrings?
Yes No

Question: Is your mobile phone a "pay as you go"?
Yes No

Question: Have you ever gone to Pizza Hut on a date?
Yes No

Question: Have you ever worn gold jewellery from Elizabeth Duke at Argos?
Yes No

Question: Have you ever eaten a pot noodle?
Yes No

Question: Do you call your Grandmother your "Nan"?
Yes No

Question: Have you ever got a present from a petrol station store?
Yes No

Question: Do you find blue LED lights attractive?
Yes No

Question: Do you have "tea" as your evening meal?
Yes No

Question: Are there cans of Carling Black Label in your fridge?
Yes No

Question: Do you consider David Beckham someone to look up to?
Yes No

Question: Have you ever cut out and used money off coupons from magazines?
Yes No

Question: Was your education paid for by the tax-payer?
Yes No

If you answered yes to the majority of questions, we're worried about you.

Anyway, Neil Duggan at Nokia spotted a potential chav at the airport and is going to send the photo (below) to the police for their records. Eagle-eyed readers of this blog might notice an uncanny resemblance to Simon Elkins, our tight-fisted tipper.

Focusing on Heaven rather than material things on Earth

Slate.com had an interesting article earlier this week about Pop-Culture Christianity. Christians are supposed to eschew the things of this world and keep their focus on Heaven (storing up their treasure there), but now they've created their own parallel universe where's there's a Christian counterpart to most secular things (Christian rock, for example). Is that the right way to go? Here's an excerpt from the article:

"In the '80s, Christians were known as the boycotters, refusing to see movies or buy products that offended them. They felt about commercial culture much the way a Marxist might: that it was a decadent glorification of money and meaningless human relationships. Then, sometime during the '90s, when conservative evangelicals started coming out of their shells, they took a different tack. The boycotters became co-opters and embarked on the curious quest to enlist America's crassest material culture in the service of spiritual growth....

At this point in history, American evangelicals resemble the Israelites at various dangerous moments in the Old Testament: They are blending into the surrounding heathen culture, and having ever more trouble figuring out where it ends and they begin. In politics, and in business, they've mostly gone ahead and joined the existing networks. With pop culture, they've instead created their own enormous "parallel universe," as Daniel Radosh calls it in his rich exploration of the realm, Rapture Ready! A Christian can now buy books, movies, music—and anything else lowbrow to middlebrow—tailor-made for his or her sensibilities. Worried that American popular culture leads people—and especially teenagers—astray, the Christian version is designed to satisfy all the same needs in a cleaner form."

The seeds of joy can be forever wasted

I have to send Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose to a friend in the book club so she has time to read it before next month's meeting. I'm always nervous about recommending a book I love to them -- what if they hate it, and their resulting criticism destroys it for me forever? I remember reading Joan Fontaine's bio when I was a teen -- she told Laurence Olivier that she had just married Brian Aherne, and he said sneeringly, "Is that the best you can do?" and she had to admit that from that moment on, she thought less of her marital choice. Withering criticism can stick in our minds for a long time.

Anyway, I have to blog about a section in the book where Rose talks about how partners can disagree over the most trivial matters and thereby destroy their happiness.

"Over what pitiful pieces of ground these unheroic matrimonial battles were fought! One might be embarrassed to write of such trivialities were it not for the example and encouragement of George Eliot, who believed it was precisely 'in the acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste had made, and say, the earth bears no more harvest of sweetness."

My own parents argued over this figurine (above) from Germany during their divorce. It became a symbol for everything that went wrong, and the struggle over who was going to get her became titanic.

Now I look at her, and I think, what was that all about? Here she is on my mantel in England, her power all gone. She has come to represent to me the futility of fighting over things in life that don't matter.